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Power of 360

As long as we look at the challenges we face from the same viewpoint, we will always be subject to the same blocks.

None of us wants to be the bee who keeps flying towards the sunlight only to slam into a closed window, missing the open door next to it.

We don’t need to seek for love, we need to seek for the blocks we hold to love. Those blocks may be there for good reasons, but until we move them or go around them, we won’t get what we need.

The power of maturity is learning how to see the world from different perspectives, how to look through the eyes of others.

Once we can see our shared reality from a range of priorities, possibilities and concerns, we can start to find new choices, new ways to address the challenges we face.

Going round the back of things to glimpse what we would miss if we just stood frozen in one place is crucial to creating change. How can we change our approach if we never change our approaches?

When we become a parent, we immediately take on the responsibility to see the world as our child sees it.

At first we have to use our imaginations, project our own assumptions, just using non-verbal cues and our own expectations, but pretty soon that child has a voice and can tell us how they see the world. That experience can be quite challenging, finding out that little thing that came out of us has a whole different view of the world than we ever imagined.

The ability to see the world through the eyes of our child, of our customer, of our staff, of our management, of fellow seekers and more is the foundation of professionalism. It’s how we stop being bound up in our own sorrows and start to find solutions that work for a range of people.

To see the bigger vision demands that we be willing to let go of our own beliefs, being willing to look at where we have lost the plot. No one else will see us or our position as perfect; we are, after all, human, bound to see things as we are rather than as they are, constrained by our own experience and challenges.

Seeing in 360 means seeing the trade offs, the compromises, the hard choices that have to be made in three dimensions.

When we stand in one place it is easy to see the benefits we assign to our own actions, but moving around a challenge, the costs to our position are revealed.

The classic story of a guru seeing fish trapped in the tanks of a bait shop comes to mind. The followers buy up all the fish, chanting while they take them in plastic bags down to the ocean. With much chanting and ceremony, they dance on the beach and liberate the fish, which the pelicans flying above immediately notice. As the birds come in to scoop up lunch, the followers try to shoo them away, telling them of the benefits of a vegan diet.

Making a choice to do something is always making a choice not to do something else, creating ramifications in the world. Only with self selected vision can we try to believe that our actions don’t have consequences, because seeing the world in 360 will always reveal less than desirable implications.

To see in 360 you have to be willing to see past your own assumptions, expectations and fears. You have to be willing to get over your own stuff and the defences you hold that blocks your own vision to defend your own comfort.

Seeing in 360 is the choice of a seeker, someone who needs to understand where they are missing the mark, where they can be better. It’s uncomfortable to see ourselves through the eyes of other people, uncomfortable to confront our assumptions and do the work of sorting out our priorities and our values.

For me, I spent much of my emerging as trans looking at the way others saw trans, trying not just to rationalize my own choices but rather to put them in a wider framework with thought and integrity. That’s why, for example, I talk about the guy-in-a-dress line (1999), a place where transpeople who are only claiming don’t really want to go.

The deeper understanding I created from seeing in 360 has allowed me to help other transpeople to move past their own fears and rationalizations, seeing their trans expression in context, allowing them to drop some defenses and do the ultimate trans surgery, pulling the stick out of their own ass.

It take maturity to see in 360, not just through your own assertions and fears, but through a bigger, more complete context. In my experience, though, it is the only way to build bridges, to create connection with other people, opening your mind and heart to see our world through the eyes of other people we share it with.